But are you ACTUALLY behind at work?

Let's admit it. We all know the feeling. There's that first day after a long holiday or right after you've gotten back from vacation-- before anyone even says anything, you've already concluded that you're behind. Whether it's emails or laundry or PTA announcements, you've somehow concluded that you have to play catch up because FOMO has got you in its grip.

Someone is going to have needed something from you last week, but you were out and now it's late and you won't have had the meeting notes (that, can we just stop and realize that no one took in the first place?!) for you to effectively deliver on at the speed of yesterday. And suddenly you're spiraling about your own job performance because god forbid you actually use your PTO to be OOO. Not because you think the company will crumble without you, but because they could suddenly deem you inadequate or obsolete if you aren't there to prove your worth at a moment's notice.

OR

Is the truth that you actually ARE behind at work because you said 'yes' to everything without asking for prioritization? Is that because you didn't want to seem like you "can't handle it" or be berated for not intuiting the (often unspoken) priorities? Now you have the "multitasker's mayhem" of 27 started projects and nothing finished for weeks on end to show for it.

These are real problems. But they also have REAL SOLUTIONS.

The underlying narrative of "never enough" is in fact, closer to the root cause, but as western medicine would have us focus on, sometimes we have to treat the symptoms first to get the immediate issue under control. Then we will have more bandwidth to address the longer term issue. We need to adjust your habits, routines, and systems.

Feeling behind is a product of our conditioning to always be and feel productive. It takes the form of anxiety, overwhelm, and perhaps even discombobulation or disorganization. 'Behind' as a term is a default negative direction, but that direction is more often an assumption than an actual direction. If we feel behind, we don't often have a sense of where our time is going or what our time is going towards if not to the thing we intended to allocate our time for.

Likely, one (or more) of the following has happened:

• You haven't planned how to use your time

• You estimated incorrectly how long something would take to do

• You committed to more than was realistic without ask for priorities or setting them yourself

• You did not keep to your intentions about what you were setting out to do with your time

There are habits that we develop that keep us in each one of these loops and the only way we make it out is by changing them. Habits, are small actions, tasks, or behaviors that we repeat consciously or unconsciously that lead to consistent patterns and/or outcomes in our lives. Here's 5 initial steps for what you can do:

1) Start by conducting the following audit:

What would being prepared look like.

• What would you need to do differently?

  
  

What do your morning/evening routines look like? They are the bookends to your sleep cycle.

• Do you have a consistent alarm clock schedule? (time for bed AND time to rise)

• Do you prep meals/outfits/bags/priorities/logistics to eliminate rushing and decision fatigue?

Are you getting a sufficient night's sleep? Food, mood, and energy cycles all depend on the restorative nature of sleep.

• What are your rules around blue light usage?

• Are you eating too close to bedtime?

• Are you going to bed hydrated?

2) Reverse Engineer your current routine to identify the bottleneck(s).

Examples of where you might focus your efforts on changing your habits are:

• Meal plans (timing, prepping, cooking, eating) to cut down on eating out or food decision fatigue

• Hard stops for work and after 5p activities (like stetting automatic OOO replies for after 5p)

• Setting an in bed by [time]

• Creating a self-care ritual

  
  

3) Keep it simple (like your skincare routine should be!)

If you over engineer your routine(s) they won't get completed.

4) Maintain the 80/20 Rule

Scaffolding holds up a building, it is not the building itself. Meaning, You're not aiming for perfection, you're practicing a framework.

5) Look for the evidence of progress

Do you feel better when you take time to prepare?

There's still so much more to do to eliminate the overwhelm of feeling behind. However, it's important to create small, manageable wins that get you "crawling before walking." Want a more customized approach? I'm now accepting a small number of 1:1 high touch clients in THE EMPOWERMENT METHOD™ where we would work closely to address, design, and execute an overhaul of your habits and routines so you can eliminate negative personal narratives and the added stress they cause you, and start enjoying the freedom of preparedness and well-spent time.